Over-Exposed Celebrities

Over-exposed: Visitors to Venice last September were greeted by the face of James Franco, plastered on St. Mark’s, in an advertisement for Gucci.

Somebody mentioned a movie star in an email a few days ago. The writer said he couldn’t stand this particular person. And I thought . . . actually there’s nothing wrong with that actor. But he is seriously over-exposed. You can’t get away from him and, as a result, you start to almost feel like it’s personal, like he’s going out of his way to bother you, which is, of course, ridiculous . . . but ridiculous doesn’t change the way people feel.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be an actor who has made, say, six consecutive movies, only to realize they’re all coming out within a six month period, and by the third you already know . . . people are starting to get sick of you. Uh-oh.

Avoiding over-exposure is a real skill and takes discipline. I remember when I was a sophomore in high school, Elton John was the biggest star in the world. But some time in my junior year, I was reading an interview with him in which he was giving the exact same answers that he gave in the previous interview, and I was suddenly done with the guy. It was just too much already.

This pattern has been repeated hundreds and hundreds of times since.

In the early 1990s, Madonna was not only over-exposed figuratively, but literally. You couldn’t get away from her naked body. It got so ridiculous that at one point, when watching the movie BODY OF EVIDENCE, I saw her take off her clothes, and for just a split second — a split second in which I thought something before I could realize that what I was thinking was impossible — I thought, “Did I used to go out with her?” I actually, for a fraction of a second, thought Madonna was an ex-girlfriend. That’s how unerotic and completely familiar the sight of her naked had become.

How is it that some people never seem over-exposed no matter how much the exposure. Clooney. Eastwood. Johnny Carson. Maybe it’s because they seem like they don’t need it. Or maybe because they hold a piece of themselves back.

Anyway, today’s question is . . . Who do you think is over-exposed right now? Who should go away for a year or two and wait for people to miss them? Enter the names in the comments or email me at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.